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The Secret to Iced Coffee? It’s All in the Drip.

If you think preparing iced coffee is as simple as pouring brewed hot coffee over ice, then you’re missing out on a heavenly experience. The Roastmaster at PJ’s Coffee wants to change all that.

PJ’s Coffee—the southern coffee roaster based in New Orleans—has long been a fixture at the Royal Sonesta New Orleans. In fact, when you talk to anyone at the Bourbon Street property—from Sonesta’s reception staff to hotel guests to the jazz legends who grace the stage at Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse—you’ll find that PJ’s is where they all turn for a pick-me-up. With such an overwhelming response to PJ’s brews and baristas, Sonesta welcomed the roaster into most of their full-service hotels, where they have become a seamless part of the Sonesta experience. Wherever there’s a PJ’s in a Sonesta Collection hotel, you can be sure that coffee is an art there, just as “Food Is Art” in the adjacent dining room.

So what is PJ’s secret to the perfect iced coffee? Naturally, their Roastmaster Felton Jones tells us, there’s a highly guarded recipe at the core. Beyond that, you have to follow a cold drip process to create the ideal cup of cold jo. “It brews at room temperature,” he says. “Think of a bucket and a huge coffee filter. And that coffee filter is filled with five pounds of coarsely ground coffee. It’s a long, 18- to 24-hour steeping process.”

This produces an intense coffee concentrate that’s up to 2/3 less acidic than its hot counterpart. When you order your iced coffee at PJ’s, the barista blends half concentrate and half milk over ice. But there are other uses for the coffee concentrate, which is bottled and sold at all PJ’s locations. Here are some of Jones’ favorite recipes that feature the brew, each one sure to give you a pleasing jolt: